Melbourne Museum free iPad app

Melbourne Museum has developed a free iPad app to enhance Museum visits.

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The website explains:

Celebrate Melbourne Museum’s tenth birthday and rediscover, explore and share some of Melbourne Museum’s most iconic stories and treasures from this celebratory iPad app.

Please touch the exhibit lets you explore some of Melbourne Museum’s iconic objects including Phar Lap, Australia’s most famous horse, and the Museum’s massive skeleton of a blue whale – as well as some of the less well known, such as fragile birds eggs and tiny, gemlike beetles.

Other popular Museum experiences featured in Please touch the exhibit include Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, the Forest Gallery, the Melbourne Storyexhibition and some of the new exhibitions in the Science and Life Gallery.

You’ll find the free app here.  What an exciting way to add value to school excursions!

3D map of Titanic Wreck

Last week eSchool News reported that a team of scientists will venture miles underwater to visit and map the wreck of the Titanic.

Yahoo news has more detail and reports:

A team of scientists will launch an expedition to the Titanic next month to assess the deteriorating condition of the world’s most famous shipwreck and create a detailed three-dimensional map that will “virtually raise the Titanic” for the public.

The expedition to the site 2 1/2 miles beneath the North Atlantic is billed as the most advanced scientific mission to the Titanic wreck since its discovery 25 years ago.

The 20-day expedition is to leave St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Aug. 18 under a partnership between RMS Titanic Inc., which has exclusive salvage rights to the wreck, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. The expedition will not collect artefacts but will probe a 2-by-3-mile debris field where hundreds of thousands of artifacts remain scattered.

This is exciting news, particularly since the Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition is currently on display at the Melbourne Museum. No date for a completed map has been estimated as yet.

More virtual excursions

Previously a few posts discussed eField trips and virtual excursions. Here are some more ideas to immerse students in learning without leaving the classroom (and in no particular order):

AUSTRALIAN:

INTERNATIONAL

These are only a few examples of what is available online.

Some of the tours have more content than others; however those with small amounts of content could still be used as a starting point for discussions. An example of this is discussing and researching the architecture of Federation Square.